Kirk Allmond - What Zombies Fear - A Father's Quest

Leo was off, moving so fast her feet barely touched the water. She skipped across it like a stone, and plowed into the guy tackling him to the ground. I ran across the stones of the mill race dam, taking a minute or so to make the crossing. By the time I got there, Leo had a very large knife to his throat and had him pinned to the ground with it. It was pressing into his skin, a hair away from slicing into his trachea.

“What is your name, soldier?” I asked. He was wearing military fatigues, and had a single chevron on his arm, which I thought meant he was a private first class.

“PFC Michael Cunningham.”

“PFC Cunningham, what are you doing here?”

“PFC Michael Cunningham.”

“PFC Cunningham. Did you see how fast she was? Do you know how quickly she can saw that sword through your neck? This is not 2009; you are trespassing on my land, operating a covert surveillance mission on my property. Do you understand why I would be upset?”

“PFC Michael Cunningham.”

“Leo. Cut his throat.” I said coldly as I turned and walked away. Leo knew how I felt about killing humans, I knew she wouldn’t do it, but this was my last desperate bluff.

“Wait!” Cunningham squeaked.

I turned around, and took a step back towards him.

“Cunningham, why are you watching us.”

“Colonel Frye ordered me to come here to watch your patrols; he is worried that the zombies are going to ambush you. He sent me to watch this border of the property for any zombie activity.”

“Colonel Frye ordered you to help us?” I asked.

“My orders were to quietly end any zombie I see shambling up your property. We’ve been doing it for three days.”

“PFC Cunningham, please report to Colonel Frye that we can handle our own borders. If I see another of his men, I’ll shoot them in the leg. I don’t believe in killing the living, but I can’t have unknown forces watching my men and my property.” I ordered.

“Now, get up, and run.”

Leo removed the blade from his throat. He stood up and said, “Thanks, Tookes,” as he ran off, up the hill directly away from our position. About a minute later, we heard a small motor turn over, and either a quad or a motorcycle race off. I listened as long as I could hear it; I never heard the vehicle slow down or stop.

Leo clearly didn’t need my help, seeing as she could walk on water, but I helped her across the stones back to the other side of the river, and we started across the back border of the property, walking along the deep ditch Marshall and Leo had dug. The ditch could be climbed on foot, but I’m not sure a quad or a motorcycle could make it. At this point, that was the goal. It gave us a demarcation point, and it helped to keep anyone from driving vehicles onto the property.

We finished our loop and made it back to the house without any further sightings of humans. There was one shambling zombie which Leo dispatched with one of her collapsible batons. Either Frye’s men stayed well hidden, or they’d been recalled. I could make out auras through the brush, but I didn’t see anything.

As I removed my boots on the back porch of the house, Max came running out in his cars and trucks PJ’s, which were starting to get a little too short. I needed to add a clothing run to my long to-do list.

“Daddy!” he exclaimed as he came running over to me. “I missed you!”

“I missed you too, buddy. Let’s go to bed. I’ll read you a story about three crazy bears.”

I held Max’s hand as we walked up the steps to our bedroom, just like we’d done almost every night of his life.

30. The Mounting Stone

Once Max was safely tucked into bed, I came back downstairs. It was ten after eight at night, 20:10, I corrected myself, and I had a lot to think about. In about an hour, I had to address the people. I still didn’t know nearly enough of them, and that was really starting to bother me. Bookbinder had said most of them would willingly lay their lives down for me, and yet I didn’t know anyone’s name.

I grabbed a water bottle out of the recycling, filled it from the tap, and went out on the back porch to finally have some alone time. I can’t remember the last time I was actually by myself. I mean, technically I was alone when I went to the Haversham farm house to attack the school, but I was so preoccupied, there was no introspection. I was really looking forward to just sitting on the porch swaying in a rocking chair, trying to make sense of my life.

Suddenly, I’m the general of a small army. I have five fire teams under my command, plus my own team of Myself, Marshall, John, and Leo. I needed to find some sort of uniform for us, not only to help separate us from the bad guys, but to form some cohesion among the groups. In the old days, I would have gone online and had patches created for each fire team, and then had them express shipped to the house. Now there is no internet, and probably no businesses that make patches and no shipping. I wonder if any of the women in the camp could help with that. I don’t really have any idea what to ask for, but I put it on the list.

The sun had fully set; it was really dark at night these days. I needed a flashlight for each person, and rechargeable batteries. I needed weapons, holsters, ammunition, and packs. I needed water transportation and storage, so the folks in the renovated hay-loft didn’t have to climb down a ladder to get a drink. I needed materials to finish off the hayloft; it was going to get really cold in there this winter if I didn’t find some sheetrock and insulation. They needed a bathroom up there too, but that was way down the list. Sanitation was going to become a concern in fairly short order though, as were the food stocks. There was abundant game around locally, but it needed to be managed. This many people to feed we’d need two deer per day or more.

I checked my watch; it was now 8:30, time to head down to the barn. I needed to stop calling it that and start calling it a dormitory or something less offensive.

When I got there, most of the people were milling around the large open area in front of the barn. Out behind was the pasture, and like all pastures the part closest to the gate was a mud pit.

I shook a lot of hands, met a lot of people, none of which I was really going to be able to remember. I used all the mnemonics I could think of, I repeated people’s names and tried to connect them by relationship, but there were over three hundred people there. Leo, John, Marshall, and Mom all came walking down the flagstone path right at 8:45. When they arrived, they stood behind me. Just as I stepped up on the three hundred year old carriage mounting stone, Charlie Bookbinder appeared out of the crowd, stood behind, and left of me.

“Everybody!” I projected to be heard over the general din of a hundred and fifty conversations, but I did not expect the immediate hush that fell over the crowd.

“Six short months ago, we all lived in comfort.” I began. “Our houses were warm in the winter and cold in the summer. We had all the food we could ever want. We had the internet at our fingertips. With a simple click of a button all of the combined knowledge of mankind was available to us.” I spoke slowly, deliberately. I hadn’t prepared anything in advance; I wanted to speak from the heart.

“Less than four months ago, I watched a man on the street in front of my comfortable, climate controlled office building bite, chew up, and swallow a chunk of another man’s throat. Then both of them stood up and walked away. I watched friends from my office get killed by groups of wandering, mindless zombies, and then in turn, those friends tried to kill me. But they didn’t.” The crowd nodded, and made sounds of acknowledgement. Pretty much every one of us had had a similar encounter.